remixable - posts tagged 'art'

RADAR NYC – 1.10.11

Mon, 10 Jan 2011 17:48:43 GMT

WATCH

Shantell Martin – Tape 4 Fun

Our friend Shantell Martin (RADAR ep 26 – Hidden Oras) is at it again, and perhaps she was a bit inspired by fellow RADAR contributor Aakash Nihalani and his preferred medium of brightly colored tape. So what you get in this video is a time lapse of Shantell and some of her friends putting together and taking apart a beautiful mural on the ground. And maybe I’m a bit slow, but it took me a few views to realize the video is actually in reverse. Mind = blown.

Shantell Martin’s website

LISTEN

Lavalier – “Twilight Lovebite” music video

"Twilight Lovebite" (official)

Lavalier | Myspace Video

We haven’t heard much from Lavalier (RADAR ep 16 – Missed Connections) lately, but clearly they’ve been busy. Their video for their new single, “Twilight Lovebite” seems to be less about the bafflingly popular vampire series and more in line with the weirder old episodes of The Twilight Zone. More specifically, it seems to be a trippy combination of The Twilight Zone, The Shining, and a video game from the 70s. And maybe you shouldn’t watch it before going to bed…

Lavalier’s MySpace

READ

The Book of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks

If you’re a grammar snob like me, taking the time to make sure even your text messages use proper spelling and grammar, then you probably know what it’s like to seethe with quiet rage every time you see a sign with quotation marks where they simply should not be present. Quotation marks are quite a loaded piece of punctuation—they tend to suggest sarcasm, disbelief, or suspicion when used for something other than actually quoting someone. This book, as well as the blog it is based on, highlight the strangest and most out of place instances of quotation marks we see every day. It should definitely be an “interesting” read.

You can buy the book HERE
The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks

SLAM Theatre Returns

After being quiet for a while, SLAM Theatre (RADAR ep 6) is back this month! The spontaneous play writing and acting competition is open for everyone–so if you are an actor or writer, you just might get to participate. The first 10 scripts through the door compete, and actors may drop their names into a hat. Of course, anyone is also welcome as an audience member as well. This session is actually five weeks long, meeting every Sunday night, same time and place–four weeks of competition, with the fifth week showcasing the champion. It began last night, but you can still check out the rest of the show.

Begins Sunday January 9 · 7:00 pm
Downstairs at the Tank Theatre
354 West 45th St. at 9th Ave.
New York, NY 10036
EVENT INFO

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@DianaEng

Diana Eng (RADAR ep 31 – Fairytale Fashion) has been busy. With her newfound success as a designer who creates whimsical fashions using math and technology, she’s gained recognition from tech geeks and fashionistas alike. She’ll even be a curator at CES (Consumer Electronics Show) this year. And recently, she launched a new website for her brand, which features a blog on how she designs and creates her work.

Diana Eng’s blog
@DianaEng on Twitter

RADAR NYC – feat. Shantell Martin

Mon, 29 Nov 2010 15:42:59 GMT

For this installment of RADAR NYC, we asked our contributor Shantell Martin (RADAR ep 26 – Hidden Oras) to curate a blog post and send in what she’s into at the moment. She sent us back some really great content, and a lot of it touches on similar themes to those in her own work, which you can see in her episode. Here, you’ll find a lot of deep questions about consciousness, awareness and the universe, and the connections between them all.

WATCH

Gregg Braden – The Holographic Nature of The Universe

This video features a speech by author Gregg Braden in which he says that our collective consciousness is holographic in nature; that is, a pattern which is part of a larger pattern, which is part of an even larger pattern, and so on, like how cells are part of a larger organism. And if one piece of that pattern changes, it would allow for the rest of the pattern to adapt. Honestly, he can explain it much better than I can, and whether you ultimately agree or not, it definitely makes for an interesting listen.

LISTEN

Claude VonStroke

Claude VonStroke is a San Francisco-based DJ originally from Detroit who wants to have fun rather than look cool, and encourages his listeners to do the same at his gigs. It’s definitely difficult to stand around while listening to his music; it’s the kind of house techno that demands a dance party. Starting off as a filmmaker, in 2005 he started his “dirtybird” label, which has released over 40 EPs as well as two of his own albums, including his latest album “Bird Brain.”

Claude VonStroke’s MySpace
Claude VonStroke at dirtybird

READ

Lynne McTaggart “The Intention Experiment”

Lynne McTaggart is an award-winning science journalist who studies human consciousness. Her latest book is a scientific detective story in which readers explore the furthest reaches of consciousness. A follow-up to her previous book, The Field, which explored an interconnected universe and scientific explanations for phenomena such as ESP and alternative medicine, her new book shows readers how to incorporate these things into their own lives. The book is connected to its website, in which readers can coordinate their involvement and track results as part of the experiment.

You can buy the book HERE

PSFK SALON at Soho House NY

PSFK is a trends research and innovation company for creative business. PSFK SALON is an event at Soho House NY in which participants and presenters will examine innovative ideas around happiness. The event includes breakfast, plenty of coffee, and speakers such as Sarah Forbes, curator of the Museum of Sex. After the presentations, the presenters will have a Q&A with the audience.

Tuesday, Nov 30 · 8:30 a.m. – 11:00 a.m.
Soho House NY
29-35 9th Ave
New York, NY 10014
$45
EVENT INFO

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Black Angels NYC

In a stark contrast to last week’s Follow (What White Chicks Cherish), Black Angels NYC is a blog that celebrates successful and beautiful Black women in New York. At first glance it may look like simply a lot of pretty pictures, it goes deeper than that, with content ranging from quotes from Maya Angelou to an article about Willow Smith and her infectious hit song “Whip My Hair.” If this blog doesn’t make you love living in New York (or want to move here) I don’t know what will.

Black Angels NYC Tumblr

WE FEEL FINE – an interview with Sep Kamvar

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 10:26:21 GMT

By Lance Weiler – In the upcoming issue of Filmmaker Magazine I write about the value of data to filmmakers. In my column I look at a number of projects and then tie them back into how they could be used by filmmakers to aid the curation, disovery and creation of films. One of the projects that I focus on in the piece is a data harvest project entitled “We Feel Fine.” Started in 2005 by Sep Kamvar and Jonathan Harris the project crawls blogs and twitter for the phrase “I feel” or “I’m feeling” and captures the results in an extensive database. This past November “We Feel Fine” was released in book form – highly recommend checking it out. Due to word count limitations found in print magazines I wanted to share the interview with Kamvar. The following is the extended version.

WBP: “We Feel Fine” is an amazing project that puts a face on various data. What types of things surprised you most about the project? In the sense that you were able to peer into a sea of what some would consider noise and in the process you created a project that has a strong emotional core.

Kamvar: One of the things that surprised us the most is when you strip away thoughts and opinions and focus on emotions, people are much more similar than they are different. The top 10 emotions are the same for men as for women, for people in London and in Bangcock, for blacks and whites. So this project for us has been about self-exploration as much as it has been about voyeurism.

That being said, there are also some real emotional differences between people. As people grow older, they tend to get happier, and further, they define happiness differently. Younger people tend to associate happiness with excitement, while older people tend to associate happiness with calm. And women express their emotions far more often than men, and have a far more nuanced vocabulary than men to describe their emotions.

WBP: When I look at “We Feel Fine” I see the potential for collaborative storytelling that makes use of various data. Have you ever considered this? And if so how do you think you’d approach it?

Kamvar: Absolutely. We Feel Fine is a story authored by millions of people who don’t know each other. The result is a coherent, authentic story. And this is not the only story that can be told this way — the story of love, the story of hurt, the story of helplessness. There are thousands of stories waiting to be told collaboratively by millions of people who don’t know each other.

When we talk about this kind of scale, the most appropriate thing to do to tell these stories is to build tools — tools that allow individuals to tell their personal stories in a meaningful way, and tools that collect, curate, recombine, and edit these stories to form the stories of the collective.

WBP: Can you also talk to the concept of data and it’s value to not only helping to discover but to also aid emotional and social connections?

Kamvar:: Most data analysis has focused on the macro level — statistics, trends, clusters, etc. These give important contextual information and meaningful insights, but rarely do they provoke a visceral, emotional reaction. On the other hand, many individual stories provoke an emotional reaction or social connection, but lack the context that data analysis brings.

For us, it’s important not only to present the high-level data analysis, but also to present the individual stories behind the statistics, and allow for the user to seamlessly shift between the two.

WBP: Do you have any opinions around DataPortability? The open accessibility to blog posts and comments makes a project like “We Feel Fine” possible. Do you have any opinions around DataPortability and the role that open data could play in the emergence of the real-time web especially related to new forms of art and storytelling?

Kamvar:: We are big believers in Data Portability. We Feel Fine would not have been possible without the phenomenon of blogging, and we have made an open API into We Feel Fine that allow people to make artwork and do data analysis with the We Feel Fine data. People have made beautiful work with the API that we would never have thought of ourselves.

In visualizing the data around “We Feel Fine” where there any considerations in terms of the way you shaped the project? Meaning did you discover and modify the project as it has progressed and if so how?

We agonized over every detail in both the website and the book. For example, the opening movement of the website, which we call “Madness”, is meant to convey the feeling of living in a large, anonymous city, like New York, where every day, we see hundreds of people who we will never see again, just for an instant. The overall energy is exciting and beautiful, but if one person were to be removed our substituted, it wouldn’t make a difference to the landscape. The swarming colored dots are meant to reflect that energy.

However, when you develop a relationship with one of the people in the city, that person becomes important, individual, and irreplaceable. The analogy here is clicking on one of the dots on the Madness movement and seeing the emotion of the person behind it.

Another element that is central to both the book and the website are what we call Montages. When there is a photo in the same blog post as a feeling sentence, our program automatically crops the photo and overlays the feeling sentence onto the photo. The resulting composition is often moving, often funny, often a nicely told sentence about ordinary emotion. We pay as much attention to what we leave out as what we leave in. By cropping the photo and not including context to the feeling, we allow space for the viewer. The viewer can fill in that space with memory or imagination, both of which are powerful allies.

WBP: Any thoughts on the future of the real-time web and where you’d like to see it go especially in relation to art, storytelling and / or discovery?

Kamvar: One thing I’d like to see is more depth in the real-time web. People’s behavior reflects the tools that they have available to them. In places where there are more McDonald’s, people get fatter. On the web, as tools make it easy to communicate via status messages, that communication has less depth. I’d like to see more web tools that are designed for deeper communication.

On the search side, I’d like to see a broader diversity of paradigm. A list of 10 ordered results work well for navigational and informational queries, but are not as good for learning more about people or communities.

WBP: What projects or technology excites you and do you have any predications towards the way people will discover stories, content and each other?

Kamvar:: I’m excited about a lot of things. One is the trend towards open source and open data. With mobile phones, there is a very real possibility that the dominant operating system will be an open source operating system (Android). Given how important mobile computing has become (and will continue to become), this will lead to more opportunities for developers and far better products for users.

I’m also excited about how little technology entrepreneurship costs. Technology that used to cost half a million dollars to develop now costs $15,000. This will lead to more unlikely entrepreneurs, more risk-taking, and more potential for highly impactful technologies.

And finally, I’m excited about the cultural shift that has led people to be comfortable with posting lots of information online. That availability of information is useful not just for storytelling, but across all the sciences. 10 years ago, a book like We Feel Fine could not be imagined. As more information flows to the web, it will be used as a database for many other things that are unimaginable today.